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Wire Harness Information and Questions

Brian N.

Jedi Hopeful
Offline
When finishing up the wire harness installation this past couple of weeks it became obvious that the car is wired with a 100-6 harness, not the 3000. There are a few subtle diffences. I kept trying to follow the 3000 "early cars" schematic found in all the usual repair books.

Fortunately I took detailed notes and photos as to what the wire colors and connections actually were before disconnecting anything.

For instance, my car, HTB7L5101, a very early BT7, built in November of 1959, has a push button starter. Kind of neat and old school (but not very safe). The "early cars" schematic shows the starter solenoid circuitry as part of a multi position keyed ignition switch. The routing of the power to the headlight switch is a bit different as well.

So, (attn: John in St. Louis), on other BT7 cars, do you have the button starter as well? Or is my configuration more of a BN6/4 carryover?

Also, to add a bit of info, I installed three new fuse locattions. One on the power input side of ingnition switch (15 amp as present), one on the power input side of the headlight switch (20 amp at present, and I run the junk bar driving lights off it as well), and one right in the brown main line at the solenoid/battery cable terminal (35 amp at present). This covers it all. Since I only had one Lucas horn in terrible shape, I installed a compact set of electric boat horns off the right side horn bracket instead of originals. These are plenty loud and don't draw nearly the power of the originals, so I put a 30 amp fuse in for the horns in the origianl horn fuse location.
 
Hey Brian I have an early BT7 that I just finished installing the wiring harness on and it is exactly like the schematic. I also had another Healey of mine sitting right beside it to use for reference. I laid the old harness on the shop floor and color for color it was a dead on match. Skip
 
Good move, I think?
The original thinking was that if the headlights are fused & the fuse blows, you are SOL. Some folks have fused the high beam only, some rely on separately fused driving lights (if they have such things) to save the night.

More modern cars use self resetting circuit breakers on safety critical circuits. You might consider using such a circuit breaker in the brown main feed line. They are readily available.
D
 
IMHO

Great idea!

If you're worried about blowing a fuse carry extras in the glove box. If the wiring is in good shape and done right, you'll never need them. If it isn't, it'll give you something to do while AAA comes to get you. Either way you won't be needing a fire extinguisher to put out an electrical fire that won't go out!
 
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> Either way you won't be needing a fire extinguisher to put out an electrical fire that won't go out! <hr></blockquote>

This was the point of installing fuses. The fear of the lights going out in the dark is not great. Usually once can figure out how to get the car off the road safely. But a fried electrical system? That's not good. Not after all the work I have done on this car.

It will be on the road saturday!
 
Brian, are you going to Mt. Hamilton next Saturday? Love to see your car in person. We will be there if there is no snow (predicted for Friday up here).
Rich
 
As of today, there is 3 days of snow/rain expected up here so we may not make it either. I don't have room in the boot for the bricks like I did with my MGB-GT. I've never driven the BJ in the snow.
 
It was a long time ago, but I used to drive my BJ8 as a daily driver in the Sierra Mountains, Spokane, Washington area and the mountains of Virginia. I never had any problems going anywhere in her. Once the snow was above the frame on the road and she still just kept on tracking! I was a lot younger then and didn't stop to think that she should be in the warm garage and not on the road! Point is: My Healey was great in the snow! Regards, STever
 
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